


the planet clear as water

by kahvikummitus



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: M/M, alien hermann, pre-canon for the most part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-17 22:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14198931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kahvikummitus/pseuds/kahvikummitus
Summary: The day Hermann crash-lands on Earth isn't the worst day of his life. The worst days are the ones that follow. (As per the tags, an AU in which Hermann is an alien from space.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently my brain is all Newt/Hermann all the time and tbh as long as it keeps me writing I'm not gonna complain (but this is getting a bit ridiculous now).
> 
> I am still working on "rise up now from the earth" but I wanted to write down all my ideas for this fic before I forgot and that turned into me just straight-up writing this so here we are!
> 
> As all my fics are, this is un-betaed so even though I've tried to be careful there will be a mistake somewhere.

The day he crash-lands on Earth isn’t the worst day of his life. The worst are the days afterwards, when he slowly realises he has no way of getting off this planet with its cold temperatures and its slightly-too-strong gravity. His long-range communications are as destroyed as the rest of his ship, and he figures that the people chasing him technically succeeded in killing him - he’s not dead, but to the rest of the galaxy, he might as well be. The furthest he could send a message to is the edge of the solar system.

At this point, he has no choice but to blend in and bide his time, waiting for the day he can get off this blue rock in the middle of nowhere. With some help, he acquires an identity, and becomes Hermann Gottlieb. He gets an Earth education, and focuses his efforts on contributing to whatever research can get him back home. If he can send humans to space, maybe one day humans can send him. It’s unlikely, but it’s all he has.

At least, until the Kaiju come. Hermann can do something about it, and so he does. He’s always been careful not to reveal any knowledge humans don’t yet have, and as he works on figuring out the Breach, and helps write code for the Jaegers, he almost gets careless. If he ever slips, though, no one calls him out on it. Everyone’s too desperate, too exhausted.

The Kaiju bring more problems for Hermann, though, than just the potential destruction of his new home planet and the new difficulty in not revealing his own knowledge. Now that there are extra-terrestrials on Earth, and they are hostile, it makes it dangerous for Hermann to ever reveal himself to anyone. And with the Kaiju, a biologist has been brought into Hermann’s life and laboratory, and worst of all his heart.

(Where Hermann’s from, emotions aren’t believed to reside in the heart. They’re in the lungs, and Hermann spends long years holding his breath.)

\--

Formally, Newt and Hermann dislike each other. Perhaps even hate. But on the days when Hermann can barely leave his bed, and has to wrap himself in blankets to protect himself from this horrible planet, it’s Newt who brings him tea and the top layer of papers from his desk. Similarly, when Newt doesn’t appear in the lab, Hermann seeks him out and talks, sometimes hugs, him through it.

But on the days they’re both okay, Newt plays his music too loud and Hermann yells at him and Newt is careless with his samples and Hermann yells some more. And by the stars, Hermann falls more in love each day. He no longer has the energy to hate himself for it, so he focuses what energy he has into making sure Newt never finds out.

(It would be bad enough if Newt didn’t love him back. It would be even worse if he did.)

\--

Hermann’s in bed again, the world weighing him down, and Newt turns up as expected. The tea tastes perfect, but the papers Newt brings aren’t what Hermann hoped to work on that day. Maybe he can get the right ones himself, if he’s feeling better later.

Newt doesn't usually stick around, but now he hovers.

“Do you wanna tell me about it?” he asks.

Hermann shakes his head. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Newt starts, “but I really like these days when one of us is ill. Or more ill than usual I guess. The bad days.”

“Why?” Hermann asks, frowning behind the mug.

“Cause you’re actually nice to me. And I get to be nice to you, and you appreciate it. Or at least you pretend to, which is nice of you.”

Hermann says nothing. Just nods a little.

“Why are we always fighting?” Newt asks. “Should we talk about that?”

“I yell at you because you do things that annoy me. Like leave kaiju guts everywhere.”

“And if I stopped doing those things, would you stop picking fights with me?”

“Maybe I’d find something else. But I have told you a thousand times to not do those things, and yet you’ve never stopped.”

Now Newt is silent. He makes a note to himself to analyse his own behaviour further at some later time. And he realises that Hermann has never directly called him annoying. 

The next day, Newt turns down the volume of his music slightly, and makes sure nothing biological makes its way onto the floor. The silence in the lab is loud and uncomfortable.

\--

Two weeks pass, and Newt’s music gets louder again, and Hermann’s chalk scratches angrily against the blackboard. They’re back to normal. The only time the music is turned down is when Hermann receives a phone call one day, unexpectedly. He speaks in quiet, quick German, and Newt attempts to eavesdrop while pretending he isn’t. Newt only gets little bits - “Hello, Karla -- Are you completely sure? -- Yes, send me the -- fine. Thank you, Karla. I’ll -- I’ll call you later.”

After the phone call ends, Hermann spends a good half a minute staring at the phone he’s just put down, only startled out of it when there’s a ping from his computer. He’s acting strangely enough that Newt doesn’t turn the music back on, afraid of breaking the spell. Instead, Newt goes for his headphones, and as he walks past Hermann’s computer, he sees Hermann scroll his way down a massive file, the contents of which Newt thinks he couldn’t begin to understand.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“I don’t know yet,” Hermann replies. His expression hasn’t changed.

Newt and Hermann are no strangers to late nights in the lab, but even they have their limits. At some point in the evening, Hermann starts cleaning up his desk very conspicuously, reminding Newt that free time and sleep are necessities if he wants to keep working efficiently. As much as they’d both like to sacrifice themselves for this cause, there might be a cooler way of doing it than working themselves to death before they get even close to saving the world.

Tonight, however, Hermann doesn’t get up. He’s got an earphone in one ear, a notepad by his side, and his extra monitor set up. Newt leaves the lab, returns with a cup of tea for Hermann, and goes to bed. In the morning, Hermann is still there.

“Hey, Hermann. Did you sleep at all?”

“No.”

“Dude, you gotta get some sleep. And food. And maybe a change of clothes.”

“Later.”

Newt doesn’t know how to argue with Hermann about this, so he leaves him be. And sure enough, an hour and ten minutes later, Hermann does get up from his seat, although the long day and night pull him right back down again.

“I’ve got five hours before this code finishes running,” he announces to Newt, “so I’m going to do all those food and sleep things you suggested.” He sounds a bit like he’s forgotten what food and sleep even are as he gets up for a second time. “Don’t turn the computer off under any circumstances, and if anyone calls for me, come get me right away.”

Hermann comes back four and a half hours later, a bit less rumpled than how he was when he left. He promises Newt he had both food and rest, and sits down immediately at his computer.

“What’s going on, Hermann?”

Newt receives no answer to his question as Hermann’s phone rings again. It appears to be the same Karla, and Hermann tells her he’ll call her back in half an hour.

“Who’s Karla?” Newt asks.

“My sister.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Probably because I never mentioned it.”

The rest of the half hour is silent. Hermann anxiously checks his emails, shuffles piles of papers, goes through the notepad he’s been keeping next to the keyboard. Newt had been tempted to go through it while Hermann was gone for his nap, but he’d resisted. Whatever it was, it wasn’t any of Newt’s business until and unless Hermann chose to tell him.

Finally, the code is finished running. Newt knows the moment it does, because Hermann practically stops breathing. Two minutes pass, and Hermann reaches for the phone. Newt takes the opportunity to go get himself lunch.

When Newt returns from lunch, Hermann is not in the lab. The music in the lab has been off for twenty-seven hours. Just as Newt wonders if he should turn it back on, Hermann shows up at the door of the lab.

“Hey, Hermann, I got you a cup of tea,” Newt says, but even before he’s finished the sentence, he’s noticed the parka and the suitcase.

“I came to say goodbye. I need to go to Germany. I-- I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

The “if I’ll be back at all” is only implied, but Newt hears it. So Hermann goes, and Newt drinks the tea himself.

\--

Karla drives him back to where they’re keeping his old ship. It’s mostly been taken apart, and the short-distance communicator sits on a workbench in Karla’s garage, as it has done for over a decade. Ever since Hermann joined the PPDC and stopped being able to take it with him wherever he went.

Ever since his crash, it’s been broadcasting an emergency signal. This signal has finally been heard.

Hermann spends the next two days on his alien communicator and ignores his Earth one. On the third day, he says goodbye to the one person on Earth who knows the truth about him, who gave him her name and treated him like a brother, and he rejoins the first family he had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I once waited six hours for a program to run only to realise I'd made an error with my data and the results were useless. Good thing Hermann is more competent than me.
> 
> Chapter two is already half-written so hopefully will be up in the next day or two :) Thanks for reading!
> 
> Oh yeah, and I always forget to say this, but if you want to find me on tumblr and talk to me about life/the universe/anything I'm also kahvikummitus on there. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it’s like canon or whatever that Newt has six doctorates but that’s like literally not possible unless he invented time travel and a way to not age very early on into his academic career, and also is terrible at career planning. So for the sake of this fic he has exactly one PhD which he got in the usual way, if perhaps slightly earlier than most of his peers. (Once again, my author’s notes are absolutely about the most important thing in the chapter - this comes up in a single line of dialogue.)
> 
> Find me on tumblr (kahvikummitus) and tell me how much you love this fic. Or tell me something else, who am I to tell you what to do?

After a week of begging, Newt gets the contact details for Hermann’s emergency contact from Marshal Pentecost. He calls Karla, who refuses to tell him anything except that her brother is alright and unable to come to the phone.

Three weeks after that, Karla turns up in Hong Kong to pack up her brother’s things. She lets Newt keep a few things, but refuses to tell him or anyone else what happened to Hermann.

“Can you at least tell me if he’s alive?” Newt asks.

“As far as I know,” she replies.

“What do you mean, ‘as far as you know’? You don’t know where he is?”

Karla shakes her head as she boxes up Hermann’s books.

“People don’t just mysteriously disappear in real life. I don’t understand.”

Karla just asks Newt to show her to the lab. She’s not allowed to, but she’s there to get Hermann’s last day of research from his computer. (She doesn’t need to, because he has scrubbed it himself, and left a note on the computer addressed to Karla about it.)

\--

The world gets used to Hermann’s absence so slowly that the people he was closest to barely realise they have become used to it. It makes it all the more shocking when Hermann returns.

He first turns up in Karla’s backyard, in a brand new ship, seven months after he left, with files upon files of data on the Kaiju.

“I always intended to come back,” he explains once Karla is done nearly choking him with her hugs. “I didn’t want to make any promises, but I wanted to see if I could find out anything helpful.”

“You should call Newt. And your old boss. And then we should figure out how to change your status back from ‘missing, presumed dead’.”

He becomes a living person again, and he calls Marshal Pentecost with a mostly false explanation of his disappearance, and he doesn’t call Newt. It’s Pentecost who breaks these news, first to Newt individually and then to the rest of the PPDC team in Hong Kong. The official story is that Hermann has been pursuing a very dangerous and unofficial line of investigation relating to the Kaiju threat, the details of which are to remain secret but the results of which will hopefully help them in their fight.

“I can’t believe this. You knew where he was, and you never told me,” Newt yells.

“You had no more a right to that information than anyone else,” Pentecost points out. He doesn’t admit to Newt that not even he knew.

\--

Hermann returns to Hong Kong soon after his return to Earth. He says nothing of where he’s been, and Newt grows tired after a while of trying to get any information out of him. Eventually they just stop talking.

The first real conversation they have is on another one of Hermann’s Bad Days.

“Before the whole Kaiju thing,” Hermann begins, “what did you want to do?”

Newt, who is almost at the door after leaving the tea and the notes on Hermann’s table, stops.

“I don’t know. I mean, the work that I was doing was cool and all, but I think something like this was always my dream. Not that I actually wanted aliens to attack or anything. You know what I mean.”

“You wanted to do something big and important.”

“Yeah.”

“What about once the war is over? When there aren’t any Kaiju left?”

“I’ve always thought that was more an ‘if’ and less of a ‘when’. I haven’t really thought about it. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“You know, I was really worried about you when you were gone.”

“You’ve mentioned.”

“And Pentecost said it had nothing to do with me, you know, that it wasn’t my concern any more than it was anyone else’s. And I guess I’d just always thought that, despite everything, it was my business a little bit.”

“I’ll tell you. Someday. When all this,” Hermann gestures around vaguely, “is done.”

“Okay. That’s not what I was getting at, but okay.”

Hermann reaches for the mug, and breathes it in for a moment, the tea still too hot to drink.

“What did you want to do? Before the Kaiju?”

“Space travel. That was my area of expertise.”

“You think you’ll go back to that?”

“Maybe.”

\--

Sometimes, Hermann imagines telling Newt everything. He imagines the war is over, and he takes Newt to see his home. Not the one in Germany, the one that’s light-years away.

He imagines taking Newt to all the planets he’s been to, and exploring new ones together. Newt would love all the alien life. The plants, the animals, the people. Aliens who aren’t actively trying to destroy Newt’s planet.

Other times, Hermann imagines staying here. Destroying everything that’s been hidden at Karla’s house, never telling anyone the truth, staying here for the rest of his life like he thought he would have to. He’d have to avoid hospitals and autopsies, but he’s avoided them so far. Once the Kaiju are defeated, he could return to his old research, help humans expand beyond their own planet. It’s no longer a self-serving interest, not with his ability to leave the planet any time he wants. He’s made his home here now.

\--

In the end, Hermann doesn’t get to make his own choice about telling Newt. It’s one terrifying day in Hong Kong when Hermann offers his brain to help Newt.

\--

After it’s all over - the war, the whole thing with the Kaiju - Newt comes up to Hermann, hugs him, and doesn’t let go.

“You lied to me, for years,” Newt says accusingly, his face half-buried in Hermann’s shirt.

“Yes. I did. I’m sorry.”

“I wanna hear everything.”

There’s a party going on, or maybe several, and Newt and Hermann spend the night leaning against a wall, sitting so close their legs are touching. Newt keeps interrupting with more questions, until he becomes so tired he just leans his head on Hermann’s shoulder and listens.

“I always thought you looked a bit like an alien,” Newt says at some point, and Hermann shoves at him gently, before starting to get up. It’s so late it’s early now, and they’ve been yawning for hours.

“Would you like to come with me?” Hermann asks.

“Where? Your bed? Your planet?”

Hermann blushes a deep red. “Either.”

Newt scrambles up, with some difficulty as his other leg has gone numb, and takes Hermann’s hand.

“Yeah. To both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hermann takes him to a bunch of planets and they come back to Earth and get married and Hermann “invents” the warp engine and Uprising never happens bcos once the Breach got permanently sealed, any connection Newt had with the hivemind got broken. Newt and Hermann happy and together and in love forever.
> 
> Also please ignore the fact that I revealed basically nothing about where Hermann’s from or what his species are like. Once I learn how to generate ideas and plot and how to write action instead of just dialogue and feelings, I’m gonna do the angst-filled 100k-word version of this, complete with huge amounts of backstory and featuring appearances from like, other characters.
> 
> Cool so that’s done, thanks for reading!


End file.
